


Ghosting

by em_ebooks



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, Children's Day, Family Drama, Go/Igo, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Needlessly Literary, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 14:05:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15172322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_ebooks/pseuds/em_ebooks
Summary: There are many ways to lose a person. There are many ways to carry them. Hikaru and Akira learn to share the burden.





	1. Chapter 1

 

**1.1: Touya**

 

Shindou’s grandfather died on a chill spring night, two weeks shy of May.     

Shindou and Akira had just entered endgame when he received the call, and he left the salon without explanation, ignoring Akira’s shout like it was any other night.

Akira paced Ogata’s living room for nearly an hour after that. The older man was in Korea for three months, and what was meant to be an evening of feeding Ogata’s fish and reading one of his terrible Murakami novels quickly turned into Akira picking up every item on display and putting it back down again. Distantly, he told himself he was overreacting.

Two hours after he’d walked out, Shindou texted him, “My grandfather died.” And—almost like an afterthought, while Akira was still staring at his phone with the horror of not knowing what to say—”I’ll see you at the preliminaries tomorrow.”

 

Shindou arrived at the Nihon Ki-in five minutes before the penultimate round of the Gosei League. Akira thought he’d been able to hide his surprise, but if the look on Shindou’s face was any indication, he was wrong. Shindou widened his eyes as if daring him to say something, but Akira couldn’t imagine what kind of speech he was supposed to have prepared.

Finally, he said, “I’m glad you made it.” 

Shindou shrugged, pushing his bag into an empty cubby at the Institute’s entrance. “I can’t stay at 5-dan forever.”

His delivery was so flat that Akira felt almost sick at the prospect of their normal banter. He shook his head instead.

Shindou, straightening from where he’d bent to slip off his shoes, looked at him directly. He was tired, Akira thought, but it was nothing like last time. He had looked younger, then, with the kind of sadness that made adults look like children and children look like trapped animals. This time, at eighteen, he just looked old. 

“I’m taking time off,” he said. “Rescheduling my matches for the next week, so I can help my parents clean out the house. They call it ‘bereavement leave,’ apparently.” He jerked his eyes away as he pushed his feet into a pair of slippers. “No forfeits though, Touya. You don’t have to worry.”

“I’m not—”

Ochi’s face rounded the corner, pinched in the way that it always was when he caught Akira speaking to Shindou right before he was scheduled to play either of them. He’d clawed his way into the semi-finals of a title league for the first time that year, but Akira—kindly—hoped he wouldn’t get used to it. Akira hoped even more that Shindou was well enough that day to make good on the sentiment. 

“Three minutes,” Ochi said, and stalked back into the playing hall.

Shindou smirked and turned to follow him.

Without knowing what he was going to say, Akira grabbed Shindou’s sleeve, earning him a wide-eyed frown, as defensive as the one he’d worn as he stepped in the door. Their rivalry—friendship?—had never felt quite like this, so brittle and thoughtless. What must Shindou think of him, to look at him like that? 

“You don’t have to either,” he said in a rush, “You don’t have to worry.”

“Touya—”

“Let me help.” He swallowed, trying to look past the expression on Shindou’s face. “I have—I have a car. Ogata’s. I can help you move things.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know,” Akira said. “I want to.” With more bravado than he felt, he added, “Besides, we both know you want to see Ogata’s face when he finds out we used his Mazda as a moving van.”

Shindou grinned, broad and genuine.

 

Shindou’s mother was nothing at all like Akira’s. This was mostly, Akira thought, due to her earnestness, the eager way that she doled out attention. It’s not that his own mother was cold, but she was often too polite to be kind, too mindful to be thoughtful. Shindou’s mother didn’t just ask after his matches or his schooling—she talked about her own days. She gossiped about the neighbors and once even compared his description of a game with Ogata to an episode of _Kinpachi-Sensei_. The few times that he’d visited Shindou’s home, he’d been secretly pleased to be so doted on. The most recent time he’d gone, he’d eaten two homemade cookies before Shindou reminded him that he didn’t like sweets.

In the car on the way to Shindou’s grandfather’s house, Akira reminded Shindou of this story because it was one of his favorite things to tease him about. Shindou hummed and sort of half-smiled at the memory. He sat so that his face was turned towards the wind that gusted through the open window, craning his arm outside like he was trying to catch something.

“How is she?” Akira asked.

“Who?”

“Your mother.” They were close, he remembered, Shindou’s mother and grandfather. All of her stories about Shindou’s childhood involved him in some way. When Shindou’s step-grandmother had died two years ago, she had gone to live with him for a month.

“She’s fine,” Shindou said. He held his palm open, pushing hard against the resistance of the wind.

 

Packing and moving Shindou Heihachi’s home was as boring as it was hectic. Between bouts of lifting and sorting, Akira found himself staring into space while he waited for Shindou’s aunts or mother to tell him what to do. Shindou himself wandered in and out, looking very busy despite accomplishing nothing. 

A couple of hours in, Shindou’s father arrived and began to order Akira about without ever once remembering his name.

“Hikaru is in the shed,” his mother said apologetically after a while. She’d said little since he arrived, but now that she did her voice was warm as always.

He thanked her.

The shed at the side of the house had a slanted, overrun look that reminded Akira of folktales about nature devouring the man-made world. The grass at its sides reached almost to his knees, and a tree grew so close that it may as well have been planted inside the walls. Boxes were stacked in disarray outside the door, with books and old kitchen implements spilling from more than one. Some had been opened and repacked. Others had received half that treatment.

He climbed the ladder at the entrance, quelling a momentary fear that the place might be haunted. Though the worst he’d find in that case, he thought as his head emerged into musty darkness, would be whatever kind of demons possessed forgotten knick-knacks.

He sneezed before he had the chance to call Shindou’s name.

“Over here,” Shindou said, as if he recognized Akira’s sneeze. Akira stumbled his way through a maze of junk before he found him. Shindou sat, leaning against a wall with his hands clasped between open legs. His sleeves were rolled up, and sweat dewed on his forehead. In the dim light, he seemed otherworldly and, Akira thought, human. Distant and arresting.

The wall had been cleared of all its boxes, creating a small clearing in the midst of all the chaos. An old goban sat in the middle.

He huffed when he stooped to sit next to Shindou. After that, they sat in silence.

Light streamed in through the windows like an afterthought, barely touching more than dust motes. Akira stared at the goban because Shindou did, because it was at the center of things, and because it’s what he had spent his whole life doing. But he could barely see it in the gloom, could just make out the field of lines beneath the shadows of the place. The silence was heavier for the buzz of the insects outside, the first of the season. It was as though time had stopped, but outside continued to rush by.

If this was what haunting felt like, Akira wanted no part of it.

They moved only when Shindou’s aunt called for him. He stooped to pick up the board as they left, carelessly like he’d meant to carry it with him all along. Still, it looked impossibly heavy the way that Shindou held it, like Atlas attempting to juggle the world.

“You should take this,” he said suddenly, when they reached the bottom of the ladder. He pushed it into Akira’s arms, and Akira scrambled not to drop it. “Here. It’s a gift, an antique. Edo era.”

“Why? It’s obviously—”

“What?” he said, “Cursed?”

“Important to you,” said Akira.

Shindou shrugged. “I want you to have it. To thank you for your help. I know I’ve been useless today.”

Akira swallowed his response. The way Shindou’s mouth had formed the word “Edo” did not escape him. Clumsy, Akira thought, like he’d meant to say another name entirely. Shusaku, of course, had lived in the Edo era.

“Stop thinking so loud,” Shindou said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not used to you acting so tactful, it’s awful.”

“I’m always tactful,” he said. Shindou snorted. Normally, they’d have begun to argue about Akira’s last matches at around this point—He knew Shindou hated that he’d lost to Zama the previous week, and Ashiwara just a few days after that. He was out of the running for the Gosei title now, and for the first time since he’d gone pro, out of the Honinbo League. But they fell silent again as they walked to the front of the house.

He held fast to the goban until they reached Ogata’s car.

“So you’re finally taking that thing home, Hikaru?” Shindou’s mother said when she saw it. “Heihachi tried to give it to you so many times but you always refused.”

“I’m giving it to Touya,” Shindou said. He barely glanced at her as he moved the last box into the backseat.

Akira, though, watched her face fall, and felt his stomach fall with it.

“You’re giving it away?”

“What? I said I’m giving it to Touya.”

Akira had never seen her angry before and wasn’t sure, even now, if this is what it looked like. Her face had gone white and she stood so still she looked breakable.

“You can’t do that,” she said, “It belonged to your grandfather, Hikaru, it was a gift.”

When Shindou looked at her, it was as though he saw her for the first time. “It was a gift to me, I can do whatever I want with it. What do you care? You don’t know anything about go.”

Akira wanted not to be holding the goban anymore, but there was nowhere to put it. He held it away from him, like it really was cursed. “Um,” he said.

“He wanted you to have it,” Shindou’s mother said. “I don’t have to know anything about go to know that.”

Shindou snorted. “He collected junk,” he said. “Look around, that’s why we’re here. None of it matters now.”

Her mouth thinned to a line and she shrank back as if her son had lashed out at her. Quickly, she collected herself, and without another word, she turned and walked into the house. Shindou stood watching her from the open passenger door, his face unreadable.

“I don’t want it,” Akira said once the front door to the house had swung shut.

Shindou glanced at the board, then back to the door. “Please,” he said. “Just take it.”

 

 

**1.2: Shindou**

 

Ogata was a self-proclaimed “very private man,” so of course the first thing Hikaru did when he found out Touya was watching his apartment was to invite himself over.

“We can play a game, I’ll even feed his fish for you.”

Touya sighed on the other end of the line. “It’s really not that interesting, Shindou.” But he didn’t protest beyond that, and invited him over that first week in March, when Ogata had only been gone for two days. He even let Hikaru snoop without complaint as he set up one of Ogata’s goban in the living room.

It was boring, mostly. The go books, the pristine desk, the expensive IKEA kitchen appliances were all exactly as expected. Hikaru looked for something out of place, something to reveal the man behind the sharp go and sharper gaze. He looked, but he didn’t touch, of course, because he did have some sense of shame or propriety or whatever it was.

When he found a blue electric guitar propped against a wall in the bedroom, though, he carried it into the living room and held it under Touya’s unimpressed stare.

Touya was already sitting seiza-style in front of the board. With his shirt buttoned all the way up his slim neck and his slacks pressed and clean, he looked almost at home there. Or at least, like he was a part of the tidy decor.

“So Ogata’s a secret rockstar!” Hikaru said.

“That guitar is missing a string.”

“Not a very good rockstar, then.” He sat cross-legged on the other side of the board, cradling the guitar. Picking at the five remaining strings, he began to turn the knobs at the head to see what they did to the sound. Nothing great, as it turned out.

Touya hummed. “I haven’t seen that thing in ages,” he said, sounding almost fond.

Hikaru looked up. Touya’s face had softened, and Hikaru stared. “What? You mean you knew?”

“I’ve known him my whole life, Shindou,” Touya said. After a pause and another discordant note, he continued, “He played it when he was our age, but never in front of anyone. I think he was embarrassed to like something so frivolous.”

Hikaru snorted. “Really? And what did tiny Touya think?”

Touya grinned. “I thought he was the coolest person on the planet.”

 

The Touya go salon was cold that night. Management had shut off the heat for spring, not anticipating an April evening to feel like it had tripped back into February. To make matters worse, they were recently returned from the Hokuto Cup in South Korea, practically a tropical paradise by comparison. Hikaru shrugged off his coat as they sat down, then thought better and put it back on. Touya wore two clashing sweaters simultaneously.

As they set up the board at their regular table, Hikaru prodded Touya for stories about Ogata, a pastime that he had never considered before last month’s guitar discovery. The man, after all, wanted to know Shindou’s secrets, not the other way around; something about Ogata’s pursuit had to this point made his own mysteries uninteresting, like his desire had made him transparent.

Which was, Hikaru realized now, untrue. Touya thought Ogata was cool. Touya had used the word “cool.”

“Did you ever meet his school friends?” He asked, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Did he have friends?”

Touya rolled his eyes. Placed his first stone at 5-4. Hikaru could see a smile tug at his lips, though, and the prospect pleased him. “Yes, but only once. I don’t think any of them ever came to his matches or anything like that.” 

“And?” Hikaru played at 6-7.

“And? They were alright. I thought they were really old, at the time. One of them kept trying to get the others not to smoke while I was there.”

A layer of smoke rested just above their heads. When Hikaru made a show of coughing, Kitajima called across the room for him to “get a better constitution, if he ever wanted to beat the young master.”

“Was he babysitting you?”

“Kind of,” Touya said. He placed another stone. “I ran away from home.”

“Oh my god,” Hikaru said, delighted, “You’re kidding.”

Touya looked up and back down again, like he was embarrassed by the admission. “It wasn’t that exciting,” he confessed. “I just played go in one place instead of another.”

“No no, that is very exciting. I don’t think you realize how exciting it is.”

He rolled his eyes. “Play, Shindou.”

Hikaru glanced at the board as he set another white stone. He didn’t want to take his eyes off this artless Touya for too long. “How old were you?”

“Eleven.” 

“Before you met me?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you do it?”

Touya frowned. “I thought you wanted to know about Ogata’s friends. Make up your mind.” 

“Oh, I’d much rather know what Touya Meijin did to drive his son into the sordid den of known-rockstar Seiji Ogata—”

“God, Shindou, just play,” Touya said.

Hikaru grinned. “It’s your turn.”

His mouth thinned, and he snapped a stone to the board. When Hikaru didn’t respond in kind, he looked up again.

“Well?” Hikaru said.

“Why do you think my father had something to do with it?”

“What else would it be? It’s always about your father or go with you.”

He knew at once that he’d crossed a line. He’d said variations on the statement so many times, but not since the Hokuto Cup. He may have angered Touya before, and god had he annoyed him—but he’d never been responsible for Touya’s face crumbling like this, into a grimace that made him look too young. He’d never felt this particular surge of guilt.

And so before Touya could speak, he held up his hands. “Geez, okay. Don’t be so defensive. If you play like that tonight, I’m going to pulverize you.”

Touya’s shoulders relaxed. His face settled into concentration. The conversation, like so many of the ones they held over the go board, lapsed into silence.

The game was terrible, of course. In light of Hikaru’s warning, Touya was aggressive to a fault. He left entire pockets of the board defenseless as he progressed, somewhere between desperate and blustering. He couldn’t have been thinking more than three moves ahead, though the lack of strategy startled Hikaru into thinking he was losing for the first half of the game.

When Hikaru’s mother called him during endgame, he thought briefly that Touya was lucky to be interrupted.

 

Hikaru did not spend his leave bereaving and even wondered if the Nihon Ki-in might be convinced to change the name to “funeral planning”-leave or “packing”-leave instead. Whatever grief he might have felt sweated out of him when he hauled boxes, and evaporated at the sight of his mother watching blandly from a kitchen chair as everyone around her moved.

The day before his leave ended, he left the radius of his and his grandfather’s house for the first time in a week. It was the first time his mother had spoken to him in days.

“You’re nothing like him,” she’d said. But she was watching TV and might not have been speaking to him at all.

Still, when he saw Touya an hour later, in traditional hakama, looking pained and polite in a crowd of journalists, Hikaru felt the inexplicable urge to hug him.

The room, packed tight with pros and their followers, felt vast and cool compared to the confines of his home. Signs and banners hung from every corner with the Touya name in bold font. The wrong Touya, of course. Japan hadn’t won an international tournament of this caliber in close to a decade, and the go world seemed to be taking Touya Kouyou’s win of the LG Cup as a sign of things to come. The fact that the elder Touya had been competing for well over forty years did nothing to dampen the notion. Hikaru could see the headlines writing themselves as eyes and cameras sought out Touya the younger, Touya the future. His own eyes, he supposed, were no exception.

A series of bows and strained smiles later, Touya all but ran to meet him.  “Welcome back,” he said, sounding breathless.

Hikaru pulled on one of his billowing sleeves, let his hand cup the curve of Touya’s elbow, embarrassed even before he let go. “You’ve been playing terribly without me.”

Touya didn’t argue, just smiled. “It’s a good thing you’re back, then.”

“Don’t think you’re going to get away with it just because this is a celebration.” 

He dropped his voice. “My father’s win isn’t mine, no matter what they seem to think.”

“You’ve got that right,” Hikaru said, earning him a sigh. “Should I wait to tell you off until the press have stopped making eyes at you?”

“I’m ready to go when you are,” he said, still quiet and biting. To anyone else, the honesty might have been jarring, but Hikaru had long accepted that Touya showed him his ugliest face.

“No way,” he said. “Try being locked in the crazy house for a week. This place is a breath of fresh air.”

Touya had opened his mouth to respond when Ashiwara pulled him into a one-armed hug. “Akira!” he said.“Congratulations to your father.”

“Thank you, Hiroyuki.”

“Where is the old man?”

“I’m not sure,” Touya said. “I haven’t actually seen him tonight.”

“Not even for a photo-op?” Hikaru said.

“You weren’t at our study session last night either! Your mother says she hasn’t seen you since the Hokuto Cup.” Ashiwara shook Touya as he spoke, like he was jostling a little kid. “Shindou, tell Akira he needs to study more if he wants to win the LG Cup like his father.”

Hikaru bristled. Tried to catch Touya’s eye.

Touya half-smiled, half-grimaced. “Shindou already has plenty to chastise me for.”

Ashiwara looked perplexed but then began to laugh. “Oh yes, because you lost to me! Well, I’d like to say it won’t happen again, but I have to make a living somehow.” 

“You’ve defeated me countless times,” Touya said, gracious as ever in light of Ashiwara’s bubbling magnanimity.

“I guess you guys have played a lot,” Hikaru said. He raised an eyebrow at Touya. “It’s like you have a whole family of go players.”

Ashiwara smiled like it was the greatest compliment of all to be considered Touya’s brother. “It’s true!” He said. “Though you can imagine if anyone but Akira called Touya-sensei ‘otōsan.’”

“You’ll never know until you try,” Hikaru said, just to make Ashiwara laugh again. Even Touya almost smiled, though he still looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.

“Well, I hope you’ll be at the next study session,” Ashiwara said, giving Touya’s shoulder a final clasp. “I haven’t seen a game between you and your father in a long time, come to think of it!”

Hikaru had never seen Touya look so strained next to Ashiwara. The young pro was one of his only friends, after all, and he hadn’t been kidding when he said they were like brothers. Touya didn’t seem to know what to say, though, and finally settled on, “I’m not home very often.”

“Make a point of it,” Ashiwara said, pointing at him as he walked away.

Touya bowed.

“I guess everyone’s restless for a Touya v. Touya match,” Hikaru said, shrugging towards the photographers that hovered near the hall’s periphery. Even the regional press was there, which was about as close as the game ever got to hitting the mainstream.

Touya’s face contorted into what on any other face would be a sneer. “Everyone but Touya,” he said.

“How long since you’ve played him?”

“Thirteen months,” he said. “But Shindou, don’t worry about it. You have more important things on your mind.”

Hikaru opened and closed his mouth. He wanted to say, “Nothing is more important than go,” but that didn’t sound right either, not even in his head. He’d never been good at comforting people, had never had any reason to before. He wasn’t like Touya, who was patient, or like his grandfather who listened to his petty complaints like he was getting paid for it. He was nothing like Sai, who had been with him through everything, absolutely everything.

Deep in his gut, Hikaru knew he was selfish. And even with that knowledge, he said nothing. He let it go.

They stayed at the celebration for an hour and left before Touya Kouyou gave his speech. The salon was almost empty when they arrived, and they played their game in silence.


	2. Chapter 2

 

**2.1: Touya**

 

“It’s weird, seeing it in here,” Shindou said, when he saw where Akira had placed his grandfather’s go-ban in Ogata’s apartment.

He wasn’t wrong, either. Despite the other two boards arranged tidily in the room, the scratched wood stood out amidst Ogata’s sleek modern decor. It was an old, unanswered question in a room that had been scrubbed to sterility. Shindou, in jeans and a jersey of unplaceable sport or origin, managed as always to look at-home in any setting. He’d kicked off his shoes at the door right when they arrived, and he was stretched out, lithe and easy, on Ogata’s couch, trying to tune the old guitar.

Akira kneeled next to the go-ban, touching a corner that had been chipped away by time, maybe by Shindou Heihachi, or maybe by someone long before him.

“Do you want it back?”

“No,” Shindou said. “It would look even weirder at my place.”

Since he’d returned from bereavement leave, Shindou had avoided talking about his grandfather’s death except in oblique references. His mother was off-limits entirely. It was a song-and-dance familiar to Akira, after so many years. Shindou spoke in riddles and Akira collected them. Shindou acted like he’d told Akira everything ages ago, and Akira didn’t correct him.

Shindou pulled a sound from the guitar that was almost a chord, and looked at him, expectation written plain on his face.

Akira stared back—how could he not?—and wondered if the look was an unspoken challenge. He couldn’t tell sometimes, with Shindou, why he looked at him the way he did.

Shindou seemed close, at times, to something like honesty—about Sai, about himself, about where Akira fit into it all. The way that he collected himself after a match or smiled at the children in the Young Lions Tournament made Akira think that he’d taken a step closer to the truth. The moments of silence that they shared on the train, gazing out of the same window, felt something like a revelation. But if Shindou seemed fragile sometimes, like he’d walk into the distance one day and disappear, the balance between them was more fragile still.

Akira looked away first. He laid out his most recent game on the battered old board—another loss, his second that week. He invited Shindou’s scorn, his intensity, his voice lilting in frustration. It was easier than asking for his secrets.

“It looks less weird,” Akira said, “when you actually use it. Then it’s just any other game.”

Some days, he wanted to beg Shindou for an answer. On some, he wasn’t sure what the question was. But most days, Akira thought he wouldn’t ask, even if Shindou begged him to.

 

In early May, Shindou defeated Zama and became the official challenger for the Gosei title. The first thing he said to Akira after the match, still surrounded by other players during the post-game discussion, was, “Don’t yell at me about that joseki until tomorrow.”

Akira smiled. He’d noticed, of course—it had been the most old-fashioned move on the board, and it had almost cost Shindou the top right corner—but he’d all but forgotten it by the end. The game had been beautiful, as graceful as a musical score laid out in stones. Even its imperfections seemed more like key changes than mistakes. Akira wished he had been on the other side of the board, so much it almost ached. It was the first time he’d felt this way about the game in months.

He was saved from embarrassing himself by saying so, when Kosemura from Go Weekly moved between them, too eager and too small to quite fit his title as head reporter.

“An interview, Shindou?” he said, and Shindou nodded, already fidgeting nervously with his fan. Shindou had left his previous interviews—all surrounding group tournaments—to his teammates, or to Kurata. Of course Kurata, being the current Gosei title holder, wouldn’t be much help in this case. Akira, though, sat in the spot that Zama had vacated, and reviewed his moves while the interview wove in and out of his awareness.

“How did it feel to compete at the Hokuto Cup for the last time?”

“I thought we were going to talk about a competition that I won,” Shindou said. From most other pros, it would have sounded like a reproach, misplaced pride. But Shindou laughed when he said it, and looked askance.

Kosemura grinned as he documented Shindou’s words and awkward charm. “We’re moving chronologically,” he said, “after all, you lost an 18-and-unders tournament, but are competing in a title tournament now, against your coach.”

Shindou ducked his head. “I, uh.” Akira purposely didn’t meet his eye. “The Hokuto Cup was great, and Kurata was a great coach. Um. I think the younger players can handle it from here, though.”

“Maybe you can steal Kurata’s title as coach someday, too,” Kosemura said, laughing, and Shindou joined him.

“Sure,” he said. “I’d like to encourage younger players to come and steal all of my titles.”

“Ah!” Kosemura said. “You see yourself as passing the torch then? Connecting the distant past to the far future?” He raised an eyebrow as he said this, as though he expected Shindou to enjoy having his words from the first Hokuto Cup parroted back at him. It wasn’t the first time, either—Go Weekly had cited Hikaru’s proclamation and love for Shusaku every chance they had for the past three years.

Akira wasn’t the only one that had been collecting Shindou’s secrets. He was just the only one that knew Shindou.

Akira leaned forward just as he did, and saw the other boy narrow his eyes.

“I wouldn’t say I’m in the past just yet,” Shindou said.

“Oh!” Kosemura said. “I didn’t mean—”

Shindou continued. “And I have to win, to have a torch to pass.”

Kosemura sputtered for a moment, but then said. “You hold yourself to a high standard, and you’ve spoken openly about your admiration for Shusaku. Is your goal is to become a modern day Shusaku?”

Shindou opened his mouth to respond, but Akira, seeing the hard look on his face, coughed and caught his eye.

“No,” Shindou said resolutely. “I can only play one game at a time.”

“He didn’t mean any harm,” Akira said, after Kosemura left. They were alone in the match room, and he watched as Shindou slid the stones back into their containers.

Shindou’s frown slid into more of a pout as he straightened up to look at Akira directly. “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” he said.

“How about this, then? You’ll never be as good as Shusaku.” Akira smiled a little, as he said it. He wanted Shindou to know that he didn’t really think it was true. Shindou was already close—so close—to making his own place in history. And of course, Akira would prefer that he were Shindou’s landmark for greatness, the horizon that he walked towards with each game—but if Shusaku is what kept them side-by-side, that would have to be enough for now. Akira was falling behind, further everyday. But the matter of connecting the past to the future—it kept the two of them on the same path, winding and narrow.

Predictably, Shindou dissolved into laughter. “That does help. Thanks, Touya.”

Akira shook his head. “You’re weird, Shindou.”

“What happened to ‘mysterious?’” Shindou said. “I liked ‘mysterious’ better.” He tugged on Akira’s sleeve as he spoke, teasing and comfortable as if they were back at his father’s salon.

 

Akira won his own match the following day is if he was riding on Shindou’s wave of victory. It wasn’t his first win that month, but it was the closest he’d played to his own standards. The air outside of the Nihon Ki-in felt new, and he was aware of his own breath for the first time in what seemed like ages. He pulled out his phone to tell Shindou, or at least to tell him he hadn’t been missed that day.

Akira stared in horror at his phone, his success erased all at once. Four missed calls and a cluster of misspelled texts from an unknown number jumbled his screen, and he had to pace the side of the building to avoid the gazes of the other players while he read them. Shindou missed his game every Children’s Day and today had been no different. Had something else happened, this time?

His thumb lingered over the call-button, and he breathed in and out, twice, remembering the day that his father had been hospitalized for a heart attack, years ago now. He pressed the button before he could convince himself otherwise.

“Touya?” Shindou’s mother said, like she was just waking up. It was obvious that she had been crying, or—Akira thought with some alarm—perhaps drinking. “Touya, have you seen Hikaru today?”

Akira’s stomach dropped.  “I haven’t, but—”

Her breath shuddered on the other line.

“—He rescheduled his game for today so wherever he is, it was planned ahead of time. I’m positive he’s alright.”

“But you don’t know where he went?”

“I don’t,” Akira said slowly. He could see Sakamaki from the Nihon Ki-in from across the street, and he ducked his head to avoid eye contact.

“Why would he leave and not tell either of us where he went?”

“I don’t know, Shindou-san, but I’m sure he’s safe.” He paused until his desperation to comfort her finally won over his discretion. “He uh, he does this every year. He always leaves town on May 5th.”

To his continued horror, she began to cry in earnest. “I knew that,” she said. “I’d noticed that, before, but. I forgot this time. I forgot. What a terrible mother I am, not knowing where my son goes on the same day every year.”

Akira was silent. What other choice did he have, when he’d had the same thought about his own relationship with Shindou? Any words he could offer would sound hollow at best.

Her voice was muffled by tears when she spoke again. She said, “Heihachi knew how to talk to him. I never learned how.” She took a breath that might have been a sob. “It’s because I didn’t know how to be a mother. I depended too much on him.”

He’d never heard an adult cry like this before, never outside of movies, and certainly never anyone that he respected. Akira’s shame at the sound resonated through his entire body, and he fought the urge to clear his throat or something else selfish like that.

She said, hiccuping, “It’s like someone else raised him when I wasn’t looking.”

“I’m sorry,” Akira said, and even though he couldn’t explain it, “I know.”

 

Akira had always associated Sai with go, and so Shindou’s mysteries, too, belonged to that world. But Sai had been in some larger, realer world too. He had shaken a family and shaped relationships, had left more questions than that family even had the words to ask. And Shindou’s silence, it had nothing—or at least not everything—to do with go. Shindou’s silence hurt his mother as much as it hurt Akira. It was careless. It was irresponsible. Akira knew that now, and he let it settle in him. He let himself look at Shindou differently.

Which is to say, he couldn’t look at Shindou at all.

It didn’t take Shindou long to realize that Akira was avoiding him. Presumably, Akira thought, he’d spoken to his mother about the call—though he willed himself not to think about it. For a while, Shindou didn’t push the matter. He kept to the edges of every room, pulled Waya around with him like protective armor. After his second win against Kurata in the Gosei League, though, he seemed determined to pretend everything was fine. He spoke as loudly as before, glanced towards Akira for approval or reproof.

Akira couldn’t wrap his head around Shindou anymore, though, and he didn’t have the energy to try. It took so much to even show up for his regular matches, these days.

At lunch on a Thursday, Shindou sat next to him like nothing at all had happened. “Ogata just told me that you’re moving,” he said without preamble.

Akira considered ignoring him, but with a direct question between them, his behavior for the past two weeks felt suddenly very rude. He glanced at Shindou, and nodded.

“Oh,” Shindou said. He sounded surprised, even though he’d been the one to broach the subject. And then, “Why?”

“I’m eighteen and I can afford to. Why wouldn’t I, Shindou?”

He frowned. He didn’t look upset exactly, in that abstract, haunted way that he had sometimes. But Akira saw his unease, and took some comfort in it, even when he said, ”I always thought we’d move in together when the time came.” He added weakly, then, “so we could play go anytime.”

Akira forced himself to look at Shindou when he said, “What makes you think I’d want that?”

Shindou looked like he’d been struck. “Because we’re friends,” he said. “And I—”

“You what?” He felt cruel, as he said it, but he was desperate for Shindou to say something real, anything to justify the silence Akira himself had constructed.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Shindou said, in a rush, “I’m sorry for putting you in the middle of my mom and me, and for—”

“Shindou,” Akira interrupted. “When are you going to tell me about Sai?”

Shindou’s mouth snapped shut almost audibly. His hands, when Akira glanced down to where he held his folded fan, were shaking.

“I know what you do on May 5th, it has to do with him,” Akira said. Shindou’s mom knew too, he thought, but she didn’t know that she did.

Shindou swallowed. “Did your father make you ask me that?” he said. He said it quietly, too, like he knew how ashamed Akira would be if someone overheard him.

The small kindness made Akira more furious than the question itself. When he stood up, chair scraping the floor, he thought wildly of the day he’d followed Shindou into the school library, when he’d begged him to return to professional go. Shindou, not Sai. His rival, not some shadow. Shindou was here now, with him and among his equals. They’d played more games than he could count, grown into high-ranking pros together. But it wasn’t enough, somehow.

“He isn’t speaking much these days,” Akira said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “But I hope you spoke to your mother.”

The one that knows your name, he didn’t say. The one that knows you, just like I do, and doesn’t confuse you with a ghost.

He stalked out of the break room, then, like it was any other day. When other pros saw him storming away from Shindou, they rolled their eyes, they laughed. Always fighting, always so intense, they seemed to say. He heard one of them mutter to their friend, “Those two live in their own world.”

 

 

**2.2: Shindou**

 

The last time Hikaru had seen Touya Kouyou had been at the Hokuto Cup in early April, the night before they lost by a hair to China. Hikaru, Touya, and Yashiro sat in the Korean hotel lobby, in garishly pink, plush couches, made in a western style that was at odds with the hotel’s other decor. They’d defeated Korea that day—pretty handily, Hikaru thought—and Kurata didn’t seem to understand why they’d be nervous. His pep talk was short, and ultimately aborted. “Keep doing what you’re doing!” he repeated with diminishing exuberance.

Hikaru’s mother had always chided him for not being able to read social cues, and he thought vaguely of introducing her to Kurata someday.

“It’s our last chance,” Yashiro said, after Kurata had gone.

Touya, who had presumably become an adult at age five, said, “There will be other tournaments. We can only play one game at a time.”

“Technically,” Hikaru pointed out, “we’ll be playing three games simultaneously.”

Touya glared at him, but Yashiro let out a helpless little laugh that told Hikaru he’d done his job well enough. He was in the process of shaking Touya’s entirely-too-formally-dressed shoulder, when he saw him. In full hakama and with an air of dignity that almost rippled through the room, Touya Kouyou looked like he’d walked out of another era. Like he’d grown bored with the modern age but was too polite to say anything about it. Beside him, Ogata, in a sharp, expensive suit, looked like a servant.

“Touya,” Hikaru said, “you didn’t tell me your father would be here.”

Touya didn’t whip around, like Hikaru half-expected him to at the revelation. He closed his eyes instead. His arm, under Hikaru’s hand, was rigid. “He wasn’t supposed to meet me here,” he said, looking, of all things, helpless.

Of course, Hikaru thought, both Ogata and Touya’s father had been practicing and living in Korea for almost a month at that point—why wouldn’t they visit during the tournament?

Hikaru meant to let him go, to say something pithy about getting a real pep talk this time. But the moment he shifted his hand on Touya’s shoulder, it felt wrong. He brushed it down his arm instead, and gripped his hand, stiff and cold.

Touya opened his eyes, then, to stare at Hikaru.

“Oh,” Yashiro said, craning his neck to see Touya’s father. “Do you get nervous when you see your father before a match? I always do.”

Touya shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I—”

“Akira,” Ogata said, approaching them with Touya Kouyou in tow. “The man of the hour.” With a gesture of politeness, he bowed his head then, to Hikaru and Yashiro. “Or should I say men.”

Hikaru was positive that he’d practiced the line beforehand.

“Ogata,” Touya said, dropping Hikaru’s hand so they could all stand and greet them. “Father. It’s good to see you.”

Hikaru flexed his hand, wondering—too late, maybe—if they’d seen.

“Likewise,” Ogata said. “I’m glad we found time between LG Cup matches.” And then, with no audible change in tone, “Who’s feeding my fish while you’re here?”

“Sai,” Touya’s father said.

Hikaru jumped. He realized, then, that Touya Kouyou had been looking at him, and not at Touya, since they’d arrived. He felt himself flush. “Wh-what?”

“Play a game with me, now,” Touya Kouyou said, voice stern as if he were scolding him. “I’ve waited long enough.”

“Touya-san—”

“Father,” Touya said, taking his arm. Polite concern was etched across his face. His body, though, was rigid. “Father, Shindou can’t play right now. We have to save our energy for tomorrow.”

His father pulled his arm away, his hakama sleeve catching awkwardly on the cuff of Touya’s jacket. “Who are you?” he said, glancing down at his son. “Can’t he answer for himself?”

Touya stepped back, expression carefully neutral. Hikaru wanted badly to avert his eyes, but felt that it would be worse somehow. People must be watching them—Yashiro certainly was, baffled and more than a little awkward—but to acknowledge them would be to show Touya that they mattered.

He swallowed. Responses ran through his head, words to explain to Touya Kouyou who his own son was, to lift the heavy air of the room, but he couldn’t seem to open his mouth in time.

Ogata cleared his throat. “Touya-sensei,” he said. “Didn’t you promise Yang Hai a game tonight?”

Touya’s father frowned. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I did.”

“Let’s not keep him waiting,” Ogata said. He jerked his head in the direction of a cluster of Chinese players across the room and began to walk in their direction. As he did so, he held Touya’s gaze, and said, “It would be better to dine with your friends tonight, I think. We’ll see you tomorrow, Akira.”

Touya Kouyou bowed to Hikaru, face hard and resolute, and walked away without acknowledging his son.

 

“You didn’t know?” Ogata said, sincere, for once, in his surprise. “He signed the lease the day I got back.”

They stood at the entrance of the Nihon Ki-in, Ogata still in the process of untying his loafers.

Hikaru frowned, not wanting to admit to him that Touya hadn’t looked him in the eye for almost three weeks. His silence had been a fresh kind of torture. The sense of loss that pulled at Hikaru was something different than grief, but something more, too, than missing a friend. He’d thought, briefly, that the feeling was “sorry.” But what he felt for his mother in those weeks, that was sorry—and his mother, by some unscripted, divine law, had not stopped loving him because he was an idiot. With Touya, Hikaru couldn’t be so sure.

“I thought he was going to take over your place while you were gone,” Hikaru said, because he couldn’t think of anything less incriminating. “He read all of your books. Got attached to the fish too, I think.”

Ogata snorted. “Right,” he said, “Following in my footsteps is just what he needs.”

“How—” Hikaru paused, “How is Touya-sensei handling it?”

Ogata stared at him for a moment, and his hand twitched. He wanted a cigarette, Hikaru realized, and was grateful for the older man’s weakness. “Do you really want the answer to that?” Ogata said.

He forced himself to nod.

Ogata sighed, as short and to-the-point as his speech. “He’s not handling it. He’s asking about Sai, and playing some of the best games of his life.” He seemed to give in, then, and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket just to rest between his lips. “As are you, I’ve noticed. To think that a brat like you might win a title before Akira.” He shook his head, but didn’t look nearly as disappointed as his words suggested.

“Thanks,” Hikaru said distantly. He caught sight of Touya as the door to the institute swung shut. His hair was getting too long, and what was normally a small ponytail at the nape of his neck had, at some point in the past month, become an elegant little knot. When he looked at Hikaru, it was with the same benign indifference that he looked at everyone else. He slipped out of his shoes with a curt nod to Ogata, and walked into the match room without a word.

Hikaru swallowed. He should talk to him.

“You should talk to him,” Ogata said. It was the only time he’d ever given Hikaru advice, and, judging by the look on his face—grave and a little uncomfortable—they both realized it. “He’s always been a solitary kid, but loneliness doesn’t suit him.”

Hikaru nodded, but didn’t know how to respond. He had never thought of Touya as lonely before. He’d always seemed above it.

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, I’ll try.”

 

A week later, Hikaru won his fifth Gosei match against Kurata.

His first act as a title-holder—flashing cameras and polite applause murmuring in his periphery—was to hold his fan up to his head, not caring that the cheap wood left indentations on his skin. He wanted to cry, but perhaps that would come later.

 _I wish you were here to see me_ , he thought, _can you see me, wherever you are?_ And not for the first time that month, he wasn’t sure if the thought was directed towards Sai or towards his grandfather.

“And so the student defeats his master,” Kurata said, arms crossed on the other side of the board.

Hikaru laughed—it was rude, maybe, but he couldn’t help it—and started to tear up then, finally.

He ached, not knowing if Touya had been watching from upstairs. He’d played as if he was. He’d thought, before the match started, that he had to be. And so his second act as Shindou Gosei was to flash a “V” sign beneath the match camera for Touya to see.

Things happened very fast, then. Kosemura from Go Weekly bounded towards him like a kid meeting his favorite athlete. A camera flashed bright in his face just as players began to file in for the post-match discussion. When Hikaru ran a hand over his eyes, it came back slick with tears, and he continued to wipe them away even as he craned his neck to find Touya in the crowd.

“Pay attention, Shindou,” Kurata said. Kosemura and a few others laughed. Still a kid, after all, they seemed to say.

Hikaru saw a figure moving towards him, though, and it didn’t matter. It was like every other time he found Touya in a crowd. Touya seemed to part the seas wherever he went; Hikaru’s eyes were always seeking him, and the thrill of revelation hadn’t lessened with time.

Touya was smiling. His hair was down, and strands of it touched his cheeks. Hikaru wanted, out of nowhere, to do the same. He’d missed him, he realized. He didn’t deserve that smile, but he wanted desperately to keep it going.

Hikaru moved to stand—to hug Touya, maybe, or to demand that he call him Gosei from then on, he wasn’t sure. Certainly to ask him what he thought of the game. But the crowd parted a second time, and Touya Kouyou stepped into the room and past his son.

The onlookers fell into whispers, except for Kosemura, who said quite loudly, “He played his shodan game against Touya-sensei, of course.”

Hikaru’s heart pounded at the memory, the total farce of it all, and by the time Touya Kouyou bowed deeply to him, he could feel his face in full flush. A single camera continued to snap, loud and rapid.

“It was only a matter of time,” Touya Kouyou said. “I knew you’d join me here eventually.”

Hikaru cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, and bowed back, trying to match the grandness of the other man’s gesture. “Thanks for your support.”

“You’ll have no choice but to play me soon.”

A couple of the onlookers chuckled at this. A game with the former Meijin would be far from a chore to a young pro.

“It would be an honor,” he said. His harsh words to Touya a few days ago rung in his head. He couldn’t bear to look up, couldn’t bear to have them reflected back at him, when Touya had just been smiling, moments before.

And perhaps because he knew the master’s limits, or because he’d only just made his way through the crowd, Ogata appeared by Touya Kouyou’s side.

“Congratulations, Shindou. Surely you’d rather celebrate with some of the younger pros tonight than reminisce with the old.”

“Which category do you fall into, Ogata-sensei?” Kosemura asked. With a polite round of laughter, the crowd returned at once to a murmur of conversation, masking the hush and tension that had fallen over them all.

The damage was already done, though, and Hikaru knew it. When his eyes sought Touya Akira this time, he was nowhere to be found.


	3. Chapter 3

 

**3.1: Touya**

 

Akira had to return the go-ban.

He’d thought so since the day Shindou had given him the stupid thing. But now that he had it here, in his new apartment and not in Ogata’s, now that Shindou Gosei had found his way to connect the distant past to the far future, Akira knew it.

Even with it propped next to the closet, away from the kitchen and the futon and the practice board, his gaze found it. Every time he looked at it, at the weird stain down its middle, he saw something new: the shadow of Shindou’s face, a splatter of blood, Edo-era tea spilled and neglected until it was too late. Tear-stains, he thought, more than once, though tears couldn’t possibly stain wood.

He packed it carefully, wrapped in an old furoshiki his mother had given him. Almost, he had used the two hoodies he’d somehow acquired of Shindou’s. But he wasn’t ready yet, to give those back. And so instead of black and red cotton, he covered the ghostly thing with blue silk, bright where it was sky, and dark where it depicted rolling waves. He bundled it up like something precious, because he knew that’s what it was.

But he’d never solve its mystery. It didn’t belong to him.

 

The midsummer air was sticky with unshed rain, and around Shindou’s house, it smelled like citrus trees. At this time last year, he and Shindou and Shindou’s friends had made a trip to the beach on an off-day, scratching lines into the sand and using seashells as stones until Waya instituted a “no work” rule. It had been one of the best days of Akira’s life, not that he’d admit it to anyone. During the train ride back, both Waya and Shindou had fallen asleep on him, one on each shoulder. Isumi, beaming, took pictures, but only of Waya, who was the only one that would be embarrassed.

Perhaps, this year, they’d already gone again, but not invited Akira. Perhaps, Akira and Shindou had ruined everyone else’s fun as well as their own.

“Touya!”

Shindou’s mother hugged Akira before he had the chance to see how she looked. Had she been crying again? Had she lost weight? His embarrassment chased the questions from his head almost instantly.

“Hikaru isn’t here,” Shindou’s mother said, stepping back. She didn’t seem embarrassed at all that she’d been crying the last time they spoke. She was, he thought, as much a mystery as her son. “I’m sorry, he’s at work.”

He didn’t say, “I know,” though he had of course checked Shindou’s match schedule. Instead, he smiled and gestured at the box at his feet. “I actually just came to return this, Shindou-san.”

“Oh!” she said, and “oh,” again when she realized what it was. “You don’t have to—”

“I’m sorry,” he said, cutting her off with a bow. “I know this time has been difficult for you and I hate to think that I contributed to it.”

“Of course you didn’t, Touya!” She sounded, of all things, exasperated, and when he looked up, she was smiling. “I must have scared you with those calls last month. Let me make it up to you with some tea.”

He wouldn’t have known how to protest even if he wanted to.

And so he watched her putter around her kitchen, putting misshapen cookies onto a plate, pulling tea from the cabinet. On the kitchen table, the most recent issue of Go Weekly sat, crumpled like it had been balled up and then smoothed back out. It had hit the press the day before Shindou Gosei was announced to the world, and contained only rankings and timetables. When Shindou Mitsuko turned to find him looking at it, she tutted and picked it up.

“He’s always in such a fuss about these things,” she said, and threw it unceremoniously into the bin.

Akira smiled, in spite of himself, and she smiled back.

Standing next to him at the table, she began to make matcha with a traditional whisk and bowl, just like his own mother did. She tutted at herself when she spilled some of it, saying “I usually just use tea bags, but we found this when we were moving. It’s just so beautiful, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“I get sentimental about old things like that, though, you know? Not everyone does.”

It took a moment for Akira to realize what she meant. “You think Shindou gave me the go-ban because he’s not sentimental?” He said, trying not to sound incredulous.

She laughed. “You think he is?”

He thought of the fan Shindou gripped during every single game, and of the way he spoke the name of an Edo-era go player with a tenderness that people normally reserved for weddings and funerals. Unbidden, he thought of the way that Shindou had looked for him that day, at the Gosei match, craning his neck to see through the crowd, even as he wiped tears from his cheeks. But since he couldn’t explain what exactly Shindou was sentimental _for_...

“No, that is, I don’t—” he faltered.

Shindou’s mother stopped making the tea and watched him.

“He is, though, isn’t he? Isn’t that why he always leaves on May 5th? To commemorate something?”

The words came out in a rush, and for a moment, neither of them knew what to do with them.

“To commemorate what?” she said, finally.

“I don’t know,” said Akira.

She poured the matcha carefully, and they sat at the kitchen table, foreheads beaded with sweat to match the condensation on the cups. Akira thought, in their silence, that perhaps she was considering the mystery of her son, and he felt guilty for instead replaying his own words, hating how lost they made him seem. He hadn’t intended to discuss such serious things with her when he arrived. Or perhaps he did, without realizing it. Who else was he going to talk to about it?

“We lived with Heihachi for five years, when Hikaru was first born.”

“Oh,” Akira said, surprised as much by the topic as he was by the revelation.

“I— we didn’t know how to take care of a baby. I was so lost, and Hikaru’s father, well,” she waved a hand here in place of words. “Heihachi, he visited once, when Hikaru was about two weeks old, and he found me crying. Masao hadn’t been home from the office in four days, and I hadn’t slept, I’d barely eaten. So he took Hikaru and me home with him. And there we stayed.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “It must have been difficult.”

The word—”difficult”—hadn’t sounded like enough, when he said it, but she nodded vigorously.

“It was!” she said, “It was difficult. And I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget that he helped me and didn’t—didn’t just give up on me.”

She seemed so sad as she spoke, so lonely, but she was smiling. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. “He was a good man,” he said instead, and tried to smile back. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She shook her head. “You’re kind, Touya. But I don’t want people to be sorry. I just want them to remember him. That’s all.”

He nodded and took a sip of tea, bitter and a little chalky.

“Oh!” he said, remembering suddenly. “Shindou said that he learned to play go at his grandfather’s didn’t he? That he bought him his first board?”

She nodded.

“Then Shindou must remember him everytime he plays. Part of Heihachi-san must live on in Shindou’s go, don’t you think?”

Her smile changed a little at that, and for a moment he wondered if she’d cry again.

“You think so?” she said.

“Yes,” said Akira, confident, suddenly, that he was right. “That’s why we play. To connect to the people that played before us.”

“Touya,” she said. “I thought you two were fighting!”

“What?”

“Hikaru said he’d messed everything up, but here you are defending him.”

“I’m not,” he said, flustered, “I mean, we aren’t fighting.”

She laughed again, softer this time. “He’ll be glad to hear that. We’ve talked since then, you know. You don’t need apologize for him.”

“I’m not,” he said again, feeling childish. “He was wrong. Thoughtless.”

She leaned her chin in her hand at that, watching him. She said, “I hope you’ll forgive both of us, Touya, for being so demanding lately. Grief does make you thoughtless.”

Shindou must have been grieving for a long time, then, to justify his thoughtlessness.

The moment the thought landed in his mind, wry and with a twist of anger, Akira knew it to be true. For all his contemplation of Shindou’s mysteries, at turns desirable and frustrating and delicate, he’d perhaps had the truth in front of him all along. Searching for details, and even denying them to keep Shindou close, had obscured the truth of him.

Akira knew, though, like he knew the snap of stones on wood and like he knew the muffled footfall of his father’s steps, that Sai had died.

He found himself, frustratingly, on the verge of tears.

“I suppose it does,” he said, slowly so his voice didn’t show any strain.

Shindou’s mother nodded. She reached across the table then, and he had no choice but to put his hand in hers.

“How’s your father, Akira?”

She thought he’d been thinking of Touya Kouyou. She wasn’t too far off. It was always go or his father or Shindou, with him.

Akira shook his head, refusing to cry. “You can’t grieve for someone that isn’t dead.”

“You know that isn’t true,” she said, squeezing his hand. “You know that.”

He did.

 

He still left the go-ban, of course.

At his new apartment, Akira paced from one wall to the next. Even with everything unpacked, it was empty there, and even with the windows open wide to the night sky, it was quiet. A stack of kifu sat on his own go-ban, from where he’d tried and failed to practice that evening. The game wouldn’t come to him, though. It hadn’t come to him in so long, he thought vaguely that he’d need to start looking at colleges. He supposed he should panic at the thought, but he didn’t.

“You should take it,” Shindou’s mother had said as he left her that day. She ran her finger along the cloth that surrounded the board. “Hikaru wouldn’t have given it to just anyone, I know that much.”

But he was tired of holding onto Shindou’s promises, and onto the legacy of others. He wanted to hold onto something more substantial than that.

He stopped pacing his room, and sat, staring at his go-ban without touching it. He wasn’t sure what to want, outside of go. He wasn’t sure how to ask.

 

 

**3.2: Shindou**

 

The day Hikaru became Shindou Gosei, Touya dropped from 7 to 6-dan.

Hikaru didn’t read the rankings until the next day, of course. It’s not like he’d been able to celebrate much to begin with, after the Touyas had chased each other away from the Nihon Ki-in. But this? This was messed up. It was impossible. It was some horrible alternate universe that one of his well-meaning fans would have dreamt up for him, a reality he’d never once contemplated because he never once thought he needed to.

It was his fault, he was sure of it.

Touya would never come to him, and that was—well, that was his own fault, too. He would have to go to Touya, instead.

 

Touya Akiko looked nothing like Hikaru’s mother, but he thought, when she opened her front door, that she did, just a little. There was a tiredness around her eyes that seemed more to do with trying to hide it than with actual sleeplessness. Her hair, more perfectly-trimmed than Shindou Mitsuko’s in her wedding pictures, was striped with gray. She smiled, somehow genuine and resigned at the same time, and then she looked like her son.

“Shindou!” she said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Touya-san,” he said, bowing his head and hoping that it hid his surprise. The heat washed over him suddenly, catching up from his walk in the afternoon sun. “I was hoping, ah, I was hoping to get Touya’s new address from you.”

“Of course,” she said, opening the door wider and gesturing for him to come in. A waft of cool air from the foyer mimicked her.

He didn’t move. He said, “And if—and if Touya-sensei is available, I think I’d like to speak to him.”

At this, she froze. Her smile didn’t drop, but went hazy somehow.

“Are you sure—? Well, of course, if you’re asking, you must be sure,” she said. She shook her head and beckoned him in again.

This time, he followed. When her back was turned, she said, “He asks for you a lot. Or for that nickname he calls you by.”

“Oh,” Hikaru said, trying not to choke on the word.

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said, when they reached the parlor, “and I’ll make tea.”

She left him there. He’d slept in this room before, had played hundreds of games against Touya and against Yashiro and others. It had been immaculate then—at least, it had been on his arrival—and it was immaculate now. Sliding doors, every panel in-place; a tatami table, clean and unobtrusive; and two western-style chairs on the second level, a house plant trimmed and cheerful between them. He sat at the edge of one of these, waiting.

The room hadn’t changed, but he felt its difference immediately. It felt emptier, without Touya in the house. It had, he thought, a different smell to it. Touya himself was as quiet as his parents, and as orderly as the home they’d made for themselves. But without him, the place had a lifeless quality to it, like it was stuck in time. The only movement in the room was one of the leaves of the plant next to him, swaying from the breeze of the air conditioner vent.

This place missed Touya. He missed Touya, and the ache of it only worsened everytime he noticed it.

“Shindou?” Touya’s mother said from the doorway. “He’ll see you now. He—it seems like he knows you, today.”

Shindou swallowed, and nodded. As they walked down the dimly-lit hall, he peered, in spite of himself, into Touya’s old room, which was empty.

“Does Touya visit often?” He asked, despite knowing the answer as well as he’d known the room would be empty. He just wanted to hear it.

“He’s very busy,” she said.

Busy losing, he thought, but didn’t say it. That wasn’t the reason he was here any more than it was the reason Touya wasn’t. “Yes,” he said instead, and watched as she knocked on Touya Kouyou’s door with a gentleness that bordered on timidity.

“Kouyou,” she said. “Shindou Gosei is here to see you.”

Her words were met with a low murmur from the other side, which she interpreted as an affirmation.

She opened the door a fraction and gestured Hikaru—Shindou Gosei, he thought, with an unidentifiable emotion—inside, pulling the door shut behind him. Her immediate departure was a relief and a bit horrifying at the same time. The glare of sudden sunlight bespoke the sensation, pouring in from an open screen, blinding and warm after the dim, cool parlor. Touya Kouyou sat facing the sun, back rigid in an oversized wicker chair. He had a thin blanket over his lap, despite the summer heat.

“Sai,” he said, like he was breathing out the name of a long-lost friend.

Hikaru had steeled himself for this, even after Touya Akiko’s assurance, but hearing the name spoken out loud still undid him every time. He shook his head to clear it, and went to sit in the chair opposite Touya’s father.

“I’m not here to talk about him,” Hikaru said, “or about go. I’m here to talk about your son. And to ask how you are,” he added, when he realized he’d sounded rude.

Touya Kouyou nodded, like he’d expected this all along. “I’m well. You saw me last night, after your match.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Hikaru said. “Did you—did you happen to see, um, Akira there last night too?”

“Was he at the Nihon ki-in?” he said, his brow drawn. “I didn’t see Akira there. I think he’s avoiding me.”

“No! Well, maybe” Hikaru said, remembering that he hadn’t had an actual conversation with Touya in over a month. He paused, considering his next words. “But it’s only because he’s worried about you.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Touya Kouyou said, authoritative, even as he closed his eyes against a light breeze.

“Maybe you’re right,” Hikaru said, and he flopped back into his chair, arms spread wide. He groaned. “He’s avoiding me too, and I guarantee it’s not out of concern.”

Touya Kouyou chuckled. “You may be a master, Sai, but you’re still childish.”

Hikaru turned to look at him, allowing himself to lean his cheek against the woven reeds of the chair. “He was childish,” he said. “Sai. And selfish. Maybe that’s where I got it from.”

“We live inside our own minds, go players. We can’t see past them.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Hikaru said, and Touya Kouyou laughed in response.

“A wise child,” he said, “Yes, that’s always how I imagined you would be.”

Hikaru pressed his eyes into the chair at that, and they sat for a moment, silent.

“I want to be there for him,” Hikaru said, finally. He swiped his face with his sleeve.

“Who?”

“Akira. I don’t want to only see the inside of my own mind.” I want to see inside his, Hikaru thought, desperate without knowing why. “I want to be a good friend.”

Touya Kouyou nodded once, slowly, but otherwise gave no indication of hearing him. They sat in silence again.

Hikaru tried, hope-against-hope, to let the room’s tranquility ease his mind, but there was nothing for it. The thought that Touya must think he’d been abandoned by a couple of idiots that were stuck inside their own minds surfaced, again and again. And the longer the silence stretched, the more it bothered Hikaru that he didn’t know why it bothered him.

“Is it true that Akira ran away from home when he was a kid?” He said, when the question became too much for him.

“Akira ran away?” said Touya Kouyou sharply, sitting up.

Hikaru held out a steadying hand, guilt swimming in him. “When he was a kid,” he said, “When he was eleven. He told me he went to Ogata’s.”

For a second, he thought that the former Meijin had fallen silent again, but then he spoke. “I didn’t know that,” he said, simply, settling back into his chair. “Akiko must not have told me.”

“You didn’t notice he was gone?” Hikaru said.

“We play our practice games in the morning…” Touya Kouyou trailed off. He looked distant, like he was replaying one of those games in his head. Hikaru was surprised when he said, full authority in his voice, “Why won’t you play me, Sai?”

“I don’t—”

“I know you don’t want to talk about go, but please, won’t you at least tell me why?”

In that moment, Hikaru could not think of Sai at all. Instead, he thought of how lonely Touya Kouyou seemed. He thought of how desperate he was to have his life explained to him through go, and to have his rival at his side.

He could relate. He knew Touya could too.

Touya Akira must have been, he thought, awfully lonely as a child. How proud and mighty he would have looked, when he packed his school bag full of practical things and left this place. He’d met Touya just after that, but he couldn’t have known. He was an idiot kid, even then, drunk on new friendship, and thinking he’d never be alone again. Hikaru wanted to hug that tiny Touya, and he wanted to hug the lonely man he’d become.

Oh, he thought. Is that what this feeling is?

Hikaru stood up, and he went to stand by Touya Kouyou’s side. “Not yet,” he told him. “I know he wants to play you again, wherever he is. But you’re stuck with us for a little while longer.”

Touya Kouyou nodded, unable to hide his disappointment. “I understand,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” Hikaru said, not knowing quite what he meant. “I’m sorry it’s like this.”

Touya Kouyou said nothing.

Hikaru swallowed. “I should go.”

The older man gave no indication of hearing him, staring again into the small yard that adjoined the Touya household. With the sun at last behind a cloud, Hikaru could see that a placid pond took up the bulk of it. The water was still, except for a small fountain that made no sound, and rings and rings of hushed ripples.

“Good luck during the Bailing Cup,” Hikaru said. He bowed. “Goodbye, Touya-sensei.”

Something caught his hand as he moved to leave, and he turned to find Touya Kouyou holding it and looking surprised that he did so. He shook his head, obviously trying to clear it, and Hikaru waited, his arm outstretched.

“Visit me again, Sai,” Touya Kouyou said, finally, “We don’t have to play.” His hands were gray and their veins stood out like the reeds of his wicker chair. They reminded Hikaru of his grandfather’s.

“Of course,” he said, “Whenever you want.” And he meant it.

“Bring Akira with you.” Touya Kouyou squeezed his hand, like a child asking for reassurance.

Hikaru squeezed back. “Yeah. I won’t leave him behind again.”  
  
 

Hikaru knew, after he said goodbye to Touya Akiko and left her, tired and alone with her husband, what to take with him to Touya’s new apartment. He realized that, without being aware of it, he’d known for a long time.

An electric guitar like Ogata’s might be too flashy. A drum set, he assumed, would be too big to fit anywhere. He stumbled his way through the music store clerk’s questions, feeling more than a little uncool, and less sure of himself by the second. But by the time he left, a long box tucked under one arm, he knew he’d made the right choice.

Before Children’s Day, but after his bereavement leave, Hikaru had arrived at Ogata’s apartment one day to find Touya doing something entirely unexpected. Touya was playing Ogata’s guitar.

He’d always feigned disinterest when Hikaru had done it, rolling his eyes and going back to his book or to the stacks of kifu he’d taken to studying. But here he was, legs splayed out to accommodate the blue metal body, his graceful fingers pressed to the strings at its neck. He moved to stand when Hikaru let himself in, like he was embarrassed to be seen with it.

“No, no,” Hikaru said. “Please keep going. I think I heard an actual chord come out of that thing just now.”

Touya frowned, leaning back into the couch. “I looked up how to tune it online.”

Hikaru kicked off his shoes, and all but ran to Touya’s side. This rebellious streak he’d discovered since Touya had started housesitting for Ogata, he thought, was one of his favorite things. “Did you learn how to play it online too?”

Touya smiled and shook his head, which meant yes. “It’s still missing a string, so it doesn’t sound quite right.”

“Show me,” Hikaru said. He kneeled in front of him, glancing from Touya’s hands to the pink of his cheeks.

Touya spread his fingers in some bizarre formation, and plucked one string, then another, then another—his face as he did it was furrowed in concentration, like he was playing a title match. The muscles in his forearm strained to hold the strings in place—an odd but not unwelcome thing to see beneath his pale blue polo shirt.

He looked up as the hum of the final string reverberated, and opened his mouth as if he meant to speak. Something on Hikaru’s face must have stopped him though, and for a moment, neither of them said anything.

Hikaru stayed, legs folded beneath him, looking up at Touya. Touya, whose face was unreadable but unbearably soft, looked back at him. The sound of the plucked string moved and moved and died in the air, still seeming to move through them, Hikaru thought, like a phantom.

“I’m going to work through this last match that I lost,” Touya said finally, his voice just above a whisper. “Will you play white?”

When he missed Touya throughout the month that followed, he thought of that moment. He knew he was a coward for not talking to Touya about Sai, and for not asking him about his father. But he wondered sometimes, if the mess he’d made of things had actually started the moment that he agreed to play that game.


	4. Chapter 4

 

**4.1: Touya**

 

Before Akira had graduated from high school, Shindou would sit, sometimes, and watch him do his homework. Supposedly, he was there to study go alongside him—“and the game we’ll play afterwards will be a reward,” he assured Akira—but instead he mostly just watched him, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, and sometimes more overtly. He laid stones out slowly, replaying old games, and letting out little huffs of breath when he thought a move was particularly stupid.

Akira didn’t mind. He wasn’t interrupting anything, and Akira thought maybe the additional challenge to his concentration helped to move him forward. He glanced at Shindou occasionally, caught his eye, and tried not to smile.

The game will be a reward, he thought.

On one of these nights, his parents came home halfway through, juggling suitcases and boxes through the halls.

His father bowed to them from the door. He was fresh-faced and almost smiling, like he was relieved to be home. “Ah, Shindou,” he said,  “Here to distract my son again, I see.”

Shindou grinned. “If I don’t do it, who will?”

“He’s supposed to be studying too,” Akira said.

“Let me put these bags away,” he said, “and then we’ll play a game.”

The game between Shindou and his father lasted well into the night. Despite the silence that fell over the room, Akira stopped pretending to concentrate after the first forty-five minutes, and watched them play. It was one of Shindou’s best. Akira leaned forward so intently to watch, that he had to tuck his hair behind his ears so it wouldn’t sweep in front of the board.

“I wish I could have been your opponent,” he said once they’d finished, “Either of you.”

Shindou grinned, but his father shook his head.

“You miss out on go when you take on other pursuits,” he said, gesturing to Akira’s abandoned history books. “You knew that when you decided to go to school.”

Akira’s turned his head away to hide his emotion, whatever it was.

Shindou, though, who only knew how to hide one thing, said, “Touya’s still moving forward, Touya-sensei.”

“Is he?” his father said. He looked at Akira, the same challenging stare he’d turned on him every morning for almost his entire life, over a board that proved his place in the Touya legacy. He didn’t want Akira to fail, he never had. But he asked questions like this, sometimes, to hear Akira’s affirmation. To hear him say, “I choose this path,” again and again, and to keep him from becoming a defensive opponent. Akira knew this.

But before he could talk, Shindou spoke again. “Touya’s go is different from yours. From ours. Right, Touya?”

When Akira looked at him, his eyes were bright and confident. He had this look on his face, like he was proud enough to hang Akira’s report card on his refrigerator, or like he’d have just as easily justified Akira giving up go and moving to Bermuda. His gaze didn’t waver from Akira’s, even when Akira felt himself start to flush.

“I do. I mean, yes,” he said, and didn’t even remember to look at his father’s reaction.

 

Akira missed Shindou. He hadn’t thought he did until he dropped off the old go-ban with his mother. But once he was alone in his new apartment, without the Edo-era antique to blame for his endless loop of ruminations on Shindou’s stupidity, theories about Sai, and replayed images of Shindou’s face when he won the Gosei title match, when he laughed midway through one of their arguments, when he grabbed Touya’s wrist to prevent him from walking too fast—well, suffice to say he became a little self-conscious.

It wasn’t that he was thinking of Shindou that much more than usual. It was just the first time since middle school that he was left to do it alone.

Still, he didn’t call him. He didn’t try to find him out on the street like he’d done when he was twelve. He hadn’t been able to find the words for “you don’t have to tell me anything, just be here,” and wasn’t ready to explain the ache in his gut—he’d spent hours pacing the tiny parameter of his apartment, just trying to explain it to himself.

Only when he opened his door, two days after his trip to Shindou’s house, and found him standing in the hall, did he come close to an answer.

Shindou wore a suit, like he’d just come from a press briefing. It fit better than his old one, though, trimmed more to the contemporary style, and tailored to flatter his narrow hips and long legs. It was dark gray, and his tie was a muted yellow, and even Akira could tell it was stylish. He realized, too late, that he’d been staring.

I’m so relieved, he thought, I could kiss him.

He could feel his entire face flush at the realization.

Shindou cleared his throat. He had been staring too. “I got your address from your mom.”

Akira wore his pajamas, because of course this is how they’d meet, after everything that had transpired. Running shorts and a loose t-shirt, his hair pulled into a messy tail—Akira knew he looked depressed, but he hadn’t missed any games yet, so he knew as well that he was fine. He tried not to think about how Shindou must see him, in this moment.

“Um,” Shindou said. Sweat dripped from his forehead. It was broiling out, and the suit couldn’t have done him any favors.

A fan blew half-heartedly from its place in the window.

Akira held the door open.

Shindou stooped to pick up a box from the ground before he stepped inside. It was long and its shape was cumbersome, and the first thing Shindou did when he stepped into Akira’s home was to place it on his kitchen bar and begin to open it.

“I brought you a housewarming gift,” he said, faltering a little in his unwrapping when Akira came to stand at his side. He smelled like sweat, and like Shindou.

Akira watched in silence as the light wood of an acoustic guitar was revealed inside the box, as Shindou lifted and began to carefully unwind a scarf from the thing’s neck. It looked fragile and cumbersome at the same time, like there was no way Akira would be able to fit it in his arms, but would still be likely to snap one of the strings in half the first time he forgot it was a chord and not a stone.

“I’d have brought you a new go-ban, but I already gave you Sai’s. Well, tried to.”  
  
Akira glanced up sharply, but Shindou was unfolding a thin metal stand from the box, the guitar propped against one shoulder like a child.  
  
“This is probably more fitting, anyway,” Shindou continued saying. “I know you want to have a life outside of go, and, well, you aren’t embarrassed by frivolous things like Ogata is.” He looked at Akira, finally. “After all, you like me.”  
  
“You aren’t frivolous,” Akira said. It was the first thing he’d said since Shindou had arrived, and Shindou’s face softened like he’d been waiting for it. Akira, embarrassed without knowing why, frowned back.

Shindou spoke in a rush. “It’s not kaya wood, obviously, but it’s the same color. That’s why I picked it, because it’s kind of like a go board, see?” He held the guitar up for Akira’s inspection, pointing to the lines that crossed its neck, then to the dots that scattered between them. “It even has star points.”

Akira reached out, tracing the strange texture of the strings with one finger. It was a bit like a go-ban, it was true. He’d never thought… but then again, he’d never thought he’d be demoted either. He’d never thought that his life would be so far from his father’s, so far from the game that he’d dedicated his life to.

He didn’t know what to say, and so he settled on, “thank you.”

Shindou set the guitar down on the metal stand, then ran a hand through his hair and said, “I should’ve come sooner.”

“Why?”

“Well, I, uh,” he said, “to apologize, first of all. For the thing with my mom. And for being so secretive all the time.”

“Shindou—”

“I go to Shusaku’s grave every May. The one in Innoshima and then the one here in Tokyo. It was stupid of me to hide it from you. You’ve already figured out he was connected to Sai. You’d have understood.”

Akira swallowed. He nodded. He wasn’t sure, now that the moment had arrived, that he was ready to hear this—

“But well, not just that,” Shindou said. “I also visited your dad.”

Akira’s stomach dropped.

“What?”

“I had to get your new address, but Touya, I had to talk to him too—”

“No you didn’t,” Akira said, stepping back from where he realized he’d been standing too close to Shindou. He shook his head. “Shindou, that’s totally—well, it’s an invasion of privacy, it’s, it’s—”

Shindou tried to put his hand on Akira’s shoulder, but he jerked away.

“Touya—”

“Why are you trying to lead him on, Shindou? You’re not Sai,” he said, hating that his voice cracked.

Shindou’s hand dropped at that. He looked lost there, in his expensive suit and title.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet, like he was trying not to spook a wounded animal. “I was worried about you,” he said, “I needed to understand why you were pulling away from everything.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Your family, go, me. I know I’ve been stupid, Touya, but you can’t just pretend your dad isn’t—”

“Stop it,” Akira said, terror finally settling into something like anger. He hadn’t wanted to talk about this. He’d known something needed to change between them—but was this what it would turn into? Shindou pushing him into corners, making his heart ache worse than it even had after that first game, seven years ago?

“Let’s play a game.”

“What?” Shindou said, incredulous.

“That’s why you’re here, right? Because of my rankings?” Akira went to pull the practice board to the middle of the room, speaking with his back turned. “You think this stuff with my father is preventing me from playing, like you did when Sai died. I’ll prove to you that it’s not. I can still play. I can still win.”

When Shindou didn’t respond, Akira turned to look at him. He stared at Akira like he was deciding what to say, a deep frown creasing his face and his eyes flashing like they did mid-match. Finally, he shrugged his suit jacket from his shoulders, tossing it over the back of a kitchen chair, and pulled the yellow pocket square from its front pocket.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Akira, “to clean off the dust.”

 

Akira won.

He won ruthlessly, all four corners of the board a separate phalanx formation of white, closing in on black’s scattered soldiers. It had been exhilarating and swift, and while he wouldn’t say he had fun, Akira felt passion running through him with every move, felt his mind spinning five, ten steps ahead of Shindou. Shindou gave a good fight, of course—Akira knew him well enough to know that. It’s what made his victory satisfying. It’s what made the climax, the epiphany of his strategy feel greater than the sum of its parts.

He was smiling, when he looked up. “See?” he wanted to say.

Shindou scowled at the board, like he did everytime Akira won. Akira readied himself for the argument that would ensue, eager to defend every dot of white on the board as one of his most prized fighters—

“This,” Shindou said, pointing to the lower right corner. “This move was like your father’s.”

For the second time that day, Akira felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. This time, anger rose more quickly. “Shindou, don’t—”

“And this,” he said, pointing to the hane just above it, where Akira had made all of black’s moves prior to that ineffective, “this is like Ogata’s.”

Akira fell silent.

Shindou touched the white stone at tengen, then, gentle and firm, and said, “I like this one best, though. Because it’s how I would have played. That’s my go, there.” He paused. “Probably why it failed, but who’s keeping score.”

He looked up, smiling, and Akira swore he could feel his heart in his throat in that moment, beating and painful.

“I—” Akira swallowed. “I know what you’re saying. I have to carry his legacy. Or I’ll disappoint everyone. I’ve disappointed him, by not being Sai.”

Shindou sighed. “That’s not what I’m saying, Touya. I’m saying that we’re all a part of your go because we’re all a part of you. If you can’t look at your father, you can’t see your go. Touya— Touya, look at me.”

Akira stared at his lap. He could feel tears and shame alike hot on his cheeks. But he heard Shindou crawling towards him, and he looked up, wiping uselessly at his eyes.

Shindou kneeled in front of him, and stilled his hands, holding them even though they were wet with tears. “Idiot,” he said. “I’d never be disappointed in you.”

 

 

**4.2: Shindou**

 

Hikaru had been alone for what seemed like a long time.

Most people, he knew, were alone: their thoughts were so much their own, that they called them silence. Their time was theirs, their actions, every petty desire and every word whispered into an empty room belonged to them and no one else. Most people didn’t think in full conversations, and most people didn’t think, when no one responded, “Maybe next time.”

When Hikaru hugged Touya for the first time—because Touya was crying and it was kind of his fault, and god, he looked so vulnerable like this—he thought wildly that he’d missed this, even though he couldn’t pinpoint what “this” was. There was a desperate edge to the feeling. Like he’d found a new way of being with someone, and a new way to lose them at the same time.

“This is so embarrassing,” Touya said after a minute, his voice muffled into Hikaru’s shoulder. Touya cried like he did most things in life—earnestly and fighting for control at the same time.

“You’re right,” Hikaru said, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that yose on the upper right.”

Touya laughed, and Hikaru held on tighter.

 

Hikaru was standing at the kitchen sink, filling a glass of water for Touya, when he saw them. Weak orange light from the setting sun drifted in through the kitchen’s solitary window, highlighting the dust that floated through the air and making hazy the stark metal railings outside. And finally, two go stones—one black and one white—sitting on the sill, just above the sink.

At first, he thought that they were all that Touya could pass off as decoration in the dreary studio. Two little representations of himself in an otherwise blank and tidy space. Then, he wondered if the stones had been placed there as some kind of talisman, the same way that some people left satchels of their ancestors’ ashes above each mantle, or burned incense and sage to cleanse a new space. Touya had never struck him as superstitious, though. And so Hikaru stared at them until the cup in his hand overflowed.

It was through touch that he finally recognized them. He dried his hands and picked them up, feeling the worn and chipped edges, the clarity of the stone untouched by plastic or factory processing. He’d only held them twice, maybe three times, but they were as familiar as the creak of the floorboards in his grandfather’s attic.

“Sorry,” Touya said, and Hikaru whipped around to face him. “I had to blow my nose.” His face was still splotchy, but had obviously been scrubbed clean. He stood straight and proud. He was completely composed, if you ignored the fact that he looked like he’d been living in his pajamas for a week.

Hikaru pulled his eyes from where they’d slipped again to the collar of Touya’s oversized t-shirt.

“Um,” he said stupidly. He handed the glass of water to Touya, and tried not to watch him drink it.

“Thank you,” Touya said.

Hikaru held out his hand a second time, and Touya came closer to see the stones resting in his palm. He didn’t stiffen, like Hikaru expected. He didn’t seem to be embarrassed. Instead, he held Hikaru’s gaze and said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

Hikaru shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m glad you kept them.”

“I didn’t—I mean. I don’t know why I kept them.”

“Sentimental,” Hikaru said, smiling.

“For what?” said Touya.

“Not for Shusaku?”

Touya laughed, once. “No, not for Shusaku.”

Hikaru kissed him. It was a brief gesture, and he caught only the corner of Touya’s mouth, but his heart was pounding so hard he could almost hear it, as he pulled away.

Touya stared at him, agape. He touched his bottom lip, which made Hikaru very much want to do it again. He held back, though, excuses running through his head in a litany—friends kissed other friends sometimes, right? They were as close as brothers, so he’d thought—

But Touya, this time, closed the distance between them, and kissed Hikaru. His lips were still wet from the water, and they slid across Hikaru’s, soft and sure. He stayed close after they stopped, and they breathed each other’s breath, not touching, but the air alive between them. Distantly, Hikaru realized that he still had the go stones clenched in one hand.

When he reached to place them on the countertop behind Touya, Touya put a steadying hand on his chest. The warmth of it seemed to radiate through him. He kissed Touya again, and pulled him close, hands everywhere at once—on his back, then his hips, one finally finding its way into his hair, pulling it free of the band that held it up.

He didn’t know what he was doing in the slightest. He’d kissed people before, sure, but not like this. Not with a longing he couldn't understand. Not people who mattered, like Touya mattered. He wanted to be closer to him, wanted to feel what he felt, and to meet his eye in every crowded room, to know that they were there together.

Frantic, he pushed Touya against the countertop, and pressed his tongue into his mouth.

Touya’s sound of surprise was like nothing he’d ever heard before. He did it again, moving his tongue further into the heat of Touya’s mouth. He was glad they had the counter as an anchor. The slick warmth of Touya, the hesitant movement of his tongue against Hikaru’s, could have brought him to his knees. He tried to angle his head—more, he thought, more of this—and bumped his nose painfully into Touya’s.

They both hissed in pain, pulling back. Touya laughed once, high and nervous. He was flushed, and his lips were wet and pink. The collar of his shirt was pulled sideways, so Hikaru could see his blush continued beneath the fabric. He looked vulnerable like this, but in a different way than he had when Hikaru had held him before.

Something twisted in Hikaru’s gut.

“Is this okay?” He said, his hands still threaded into Touya’s hair. “I mean, are we okay?”

Touya nodded, wide-eyed, then dropped his head to rest on Hikaru’s shoulder. “I missed you,” he said, his words muffled. His body was hot against Hikaru’s neck, and his breath was hotter.

“I missed you too,” he said. “I didn’t know, uh. I didn’t know you missed me like this, though.”

Touya kissed his neck in response, pressing his lips to Hikaru’s pounding pulse.

Hikaru shuddered.

They were kissing again, then, sloppy and graceless. It was as if, permission newly granted, neither of them knew where to begin. Hikaru’s teeth grazed Touya’s bottom lip, and he hissed, pressing into him like it hadn’t been a mistake, like he was desperate for something only Hikaru could give him.

Hikaru could feel him, hard against his leg, and felt his own cock twitch in response.

On instinct, he moved his leg against him, and thrilled when Touya’s breath hitched, when his hands clenched on the sleeves of Hikaru’s shirt. He wanted to touch him, but didn’t know how to pull away enough to put his hands between them. So he moved his leg again, and tried to swallow the sound that Touya made in response.

Touya clung to him like he might fall. He rolled his hips, out of rhythm with Hikaru’s own movements, needy and wanton, until he was all but rutting against Hikaru’s leg. Hikaru tried to hold him steady, but could feel his own need growing, making him unsteady.

Hikaru could feel the moment when Touya came, just a moment later. He pressed his face into Hikaru’s chest, and his whole body tensed. Hikaru wanted badly to see him, to hear him as it happened—but instead Touya maintained control even as he lost it. Instead, Hikaru held him up. He kissed the side of his head, and kissed it again.

“Touya,” he muttered, because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

Touya found his footing a little, at that, and leaned back to look at him, hands still gripping Hikaru’s wrinkled button-up. He grimaced as he said, “Sorry.”

Hikaru swallowed. “For which part?”

“Um,” Touya shifted his gaze, looking embarrassed and dazed at the same time. It was a good look for him, Hikaru thought. His hair was wild, and his eyes were unguarded. “For messing up your suit,” he said, frowning down at Hikaru’s pants leg. “And for doing this standing up, I guess.”

“Not all of it, then?”

Touya’s eyes sharpened, then, and the look he gave Hikaru was suddenly and utterly devoid of any trace of his former embarrassment.

“No,” he said, “Stupid.” He kissed the side of Hikaru’s mouth.

“I thought—” Hikaru said, the potential for rejection still weighing heavy in him, “I thought when I saw those stones, that I’d have to tell you about Sai. That’s what I thought I’d be doing right now.”

Touya groaned. “Don’t. No. Not right now. I’ll kill you.”

He pushed Hikaru away, just long enough to grab his hand and pull him towards the main room. “Come on,” he said, “Let’s get the futon out.”


	5. Chapter 5

 

**5.1 : Touya**

 

The air around the Touya household was serene. When he stood still at the front door, Akira could hear the dull tinkling of the water in the fountain out back, and the chimes on their neighbor’s porch. Above his head, three koinobori flickered occasionally against the breeze, one carp for himself and the others for his parents—though he was no longer a child, and though he no longer lived at home. Akira smiled, watching them twitch in different directions, no guiding wind to keep them in-stream.

He knocked on the door and hugged his mother right away when she answered, before he could let himself get nervous about it like last time.

“Akira!” she said, and hugged him back, small and familiar and solid. He took a deep breath before letting go, and her hair smelled like home.

“I brought cookies,” he said, holding up a box wrapped messily in images of waves and wind. “Shindou made them,” he added, “they’re not very good.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked delighted and also, a little—as she touched her hair as if to fix it into place—embarrassed. “I’m sure they’re wonderful. You’ll have to thank him for me.”

Like him, Akira’s mother did not like sweets. But she’d eat them anyway, he knew, and she’d probably even like them.

 

His father, when Akira entered the room, did not speak, and did not give any indication of recognizing him. He sat in his old wicker chair, the same one his wife had once sat in to nurse their son. It was sturdy, made somehow sturdier by the layers of blankets that covered it, by the heavy jacket Touya Kouyou wore to protect him from the cold, and by the man himself—a mountain, even as he was dwarfed by his surroundings.

“He insists on having the screens open, even though he’s freezing,” Akira’s mother said, chiding, as she delivered tea to them both. She soothed her hand over her husband’s head and cheek when she passed him, and Akira thought that she’d become freer with her touches since Akira had tried to do the same. He was grateful for it.

Akira picked up his cup, and was grateful again to have something to hold.

“How have the birds been, this spring?” Akira asked. He remembered, when he was a child, a sparrow bounding into his father’s sitting room when the screens were thrown open like this. It had taken them hours, and a visit from Ogata, to ferry the thing out. Akira had laughed almost to crying, and then had cried, when it was gone.

“No little spirits have visited us yet,” his mother said, smiling.

And so they spoke for close to an hour, of small things around the house, and of their mutual friends at the Nihon ki-in. He told them that he’d be moving in with Shindou soon, once his lease was finished, and watched as his mother brushed his father’s hand when he said it. She said that she was taking a bonsai course at the local nature center, and would bring one for them, as a housewarming gift.

He said that he’d almost finished learning “Akatombo,” and would bring his guitar soon to play it for them.

“Do you remember, father,” he said, “that you used to sing it to me?”

Touya Kouyou said nothing, but when Touya Akiko began to hum the song, he smiled, and later, when Akira stooped to hug him goodbye, he smiled again.

 

“How did it go?” Hikaru said, when he arrived at Akira’s apartment later that day. He’d returned from his match close to an hour early. Akira didn’t bother asking who had won.

Hikaru tripped in his rush to pull of his shoes, and stooped to kiss him sloppily on the cheek.

Akira unfolded his legs from where he kneeled next to the go-ban, and leaned into Hikaru’s kiss. “It went well,” he said, “I think he remembered, a little. Mom said she’s going to make us a bonsai tree.”

“Oh god,” said Hikaru, “I’ll try not to kill it.” And then, as he sat down next to Akira at the board, “Did you play the song for him?”

Akira shuffled his fingers through the bowl of white stones, mouth twisting. “I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t carry the guitar and your cookies at the same time.”

Hikaru groaned, and pushed against his shoulder. “Akira!” he said. “What a lame excuse.”

Akira frowned. He kissed Hikaru on the mouth, and felt him still beneath his touch.

“She liked the cookies,” he said, after a moment.

“Hm? Oh, good.”

“Next time, you can carry them, and I’ll carry the guitar.”

Hikaru grinned. “Next time, we’ll be there to celebrate the new Touya Meijin.” He slung his arms around Akira’s shoulders when he spoke, lazy and challenging at the same time.

“Don’t write Ogata off—”

“—so easily, yeah I know,” Hikaru said, kissing him once on the neck. “Didn’t you know, though? Only rockstars get to inherit the Meijin title.”

Akira laughed.

  
  


**5.2: Shindou**

 

On May 5th, Hikaru visited his grandfather’s grave.

It was warm, the air full of crisp promise. The sun barely touched the tombstones though, shaded as they were by trees. Moss grew on their backs, and light seemed to become muted before it could reach them. It was otherworldly there in the graveyard, and loud with the sound of forest.

Hikaru walked through the tidy little rows of tombstones with his mother’s arm looped through his. She hadn’t asked why he wanted to go, even though they’d just visited two months before for Heihachi’s birthday. She didn’t invite her husband, Shindou Heihachi’s son.

She packed a lunch, instead. She wore a yellow dress and a smile that said she’d be happy enough for them both, if Hikaru couldn’t manage.

Hikaru managed.

“He’d like this place,” he said, because it was more wild here than Shusaku’s gravesite, and because it looked like the woods around his grandfather's house. “It feels haunted, doesn’t it?”

His mom jostled his shoulder. “Hikaru, have some respect,” she said. Looking around, she added, “But he did love ghost stories, didn’t he?”

“Ghost stories and go, I got all his best qualities. You used to tell them too.”

“Ah,” she said, smiling, “I just copied all of his. I don’t remember them anymore.”

They found Shindou Heihachi’s tombstone, then, nestled next to his wife’s, who Hikaru could scarcely recall, and his parents and his parents’ parents, who Hikaru had never met.

He and his mom stood for a moment, in silence. But stillness was neither of their natures, and so they sat instead to eat, spreading out a blanket in the biggest patch of light they could find. No one else was there that day, and it seemed fitting, that way. Like the two of them had been allowed into a hidden place, and it had been forgotten by the people in the city.

“Where do you normally go?” She said, once they’d settled on the ground.

He didn’t ask what she meant. He said, “A different graveyard,” each word chosen and placed like a stone, “A famous go player, named Honinbo Shusaku.”

She looked a bit startled at this. “For work, then?”

He smiled. “No, not for work.” He took a sip of tea from a thermos. He’d known what he was going to say, but that didn’t make it easier. “A friend of mine,” he said, “loved Shusaku, and he died. I don’t know where he’s buried. So I visit Shusaku instead.”

He couldn’t look at her, quite, when he said it. His eyes kept wavering.

She took the thermos from his hands and set it on the ground. She held his hand.

He held hers back, feeling like a child and glad for it. He was a child when he knew Sai. He was a child when he’d sought comfort like this and found it, readily, at the back of his own head.

“You don’t need to be there today?” she said.

“Nah,” he said, “Shusaku’s grave isn’t his. Being with you and Grandpa, that’s closer to it.  Besides, he’d like this place.” Hikaru smiled. “They both would.”

 

Akira was already at their door when they got home, standing awkwardly like he hadn’t arrived early, and like they hadn’t arrived late.

He wore a blue yukata, tied snug and trim around his waist. Its neck was pulled tight, but with his hair twisted to the back of his head, the skin of Akira’s neck was on full display, delicate and bare. He looked severe and traditional, and not at all like he was about to go to a festival.

Hikaru hoped his mother was too focused on her own embarrassment to notice his reaction.

“I’m so sorry we kept you waiting, Touya,” she said, taking her last few strides at a jog.

Akira smiled at her and waved his hands. “Not at all, Shindou-san.”

“Hikaru will have to hurry and get dressed,” she said as she turned to unlock the door.

Akira looked at Hikaru then, and saw him looking at him, and he rolled his eyes. “Don’t hurry on my account,” he said.

Hikaru did hurry. He was used to trying to catch up to Akira.

His mom fussed over him once he came back down, though, retying his obi, and telling him he looked like a little kid. “It’s getting to be too small, even,” she said, “When did you get to be so tall?”

Over her shoulder, Akira smiled at him, his arms crossed. He was used to waiting.

And when they left finally—walking down the street together, past Akari’s house, to the park where Sai had once taught Hikaru how to place go stones—Akira reached out and held his hand. Families and kids rushed past them, too occupied with the smells of Golden Week—frying oil and yakitori and cotton candy—to notice.

“How did it go?” he said.

Hikaru smiled. “Okay,” he said, “Good.”

“You told her?”

Hikaru nodded.

Akira squeezed his hand. “And you’re alright?”

“Yeah,” Hikaru said, squeezing back. “I could just use a distraction, I think.”

“Hm,” Akira said, a look of concentration on his face, “I can think of something.”

After a moment, as the crowd began to grow, as the park and its tents and lights and children came into view, Akira said, finally, “3-4.”

“Akira!” Hikaru laughed. “I thought you were going to win me a goldfish or something.”

“Not until you’ve earned it,” Akira said.

“Okay,” said Hikaru. He squeezed Akira’s hand and dropped it. He began to jog towards the festival entrance.

“Hikaru!” Akira said. Hikaru heard him scramble to catch up. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to win a fish for myself,” he said, facing forward.

“No, I was supposed to get one for you,” said Akira.

Hikaru grinned and continued towards the front. “4-3,” he said.

Akira’s groan of frustration followed him through the gates, but when Hikaru looked, he saw, silhouetted against the evening sky, that he was smiling.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is a long time coming, written as it was over the course of four winters, periods of grief and pain, and sets of stupid formal constraints. I'm proud to finally post it now, and I'm also relieved. This series knocks me out fresh every time I revisit it, and I'm glad to offer up my own take on the themes that have stuck with me during my own coming-of-age narrative. Thank you for reading and, in some cases, for your patience.


End file.
